Wow. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) announces on Tuesday he will not seek re-election, and Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) follows up with an announcement today.

This watcher of North Dakota politics is surprised, if only because Congressional incumbency is as close you can get to a sinecure in the state. The last time an incument member of Congress was defeated in North Dakota was 1986, when now Sen. Kent Conrad, a Democrat, knocked off Sen. Mark Andrews, a Republican. And septuagenarianism has never been a disqualification: Sen. Quentin Burdick (D-ND) was 84 when he died in office in 1992 after serving 32 years in the Senate. When Sen. Milt Young (R-ND) retired from the Senate in 1982, he was 84 and had served for 36 years. Dorgan is just 67.

Senator Dorgan’s voting record on Key Votes as identified by the National Association of Manufacturers is available here. In the 110th Congress (2007-2008) he recorded a 15 percent rating on pro-manufacturing votes; he twice reached 35 percent during a Congress.

Senator Dodd’s record is here. In the 110th, Sen. Dodd achieved an 8 percent rating on manufacturing issues. His high point was 46 percent in the 105th Congress, his first two years in the Senate; in the 107th Congress, he recorded a 0 percent score.

The two announcements have implications for monetary policy. Marketplace Morning Report this a.m. covered the Dodd’s announcement by noting the Senator’s support for legislation to limit the authority of the Federal Reserve. Senator Dorgan, too, has been a relentless critic of the Fed of the populist ilk during his tenure in Congress.

(Disclosure: Your blogger worked for North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven during the 2000 campaign and for six months during his administration. Hoeven, a Republican, was already widely expected to seek the Senate seat even before Dorgan’s announcement.)

The American Petroleum Institute and Newsweek magazine sponsored a panel discussion Tuesday at the U.S. Capitol, “Climate and Energy Policy: Moving?” Moderated by Newsweek’s Howard Fineman, the forum proved a good opportunity to hear from policymakers — Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), and Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) — as well as Jack Gerard, head of the API.

The transcript of the discussion has now been posted here. We especially appreciated Jack’s calm and fact-filled presentation on the economic importance of the energy industry and the potential harm that would come from passing cap-and-trade legislation. In responding to Rep. Markey defense of Waxman-Markey, Gerard argued:

The Chairman identified his bill as market-oriented. We believe it’s anything but. In fact, that bill has already picked the winners and the losers. Unfortunately, those who consume fuels in this country like gas, diesel, et cetera, are the clear losers. We’re held accountable, responsible for 44 percent of all emissions and given 2 percent of the allowances.

Who do you think is going to bear the cost of the bill at the end of the day? And that’s why the vast majority of all economic analyses point out that we’re probably close to 2 million jobs being lost in this country as a result of the bill. We don’t believe it’s market-oriented at all.

Secondarily, consumer-focused. Same point. If you’re imposing tremendous burden on the consumers, where you’re driving their gasoline price, estimates based on EIA data, governmental data, will drive it close to $5 a gallon in the current marketplace. We believe that’s excessive and it hurts consumers.

Last point, job creator. …Every major economic analysis of the House-passed bill shows job destruction. Some are as high as multi-millions. We don’t think this bill is a job creator. We believe it’s far from it, and we believe that’s one of the key reasons why we really need to reset. Look at all the great ideas that many have, including the Chairman, and come back with a new start to get us someplace with an energy policy and a climate policy that can be integrated and work for the United States.

The one odd point about the 90-minute discussion is no one raised the issue of Climategate, that is, the documents from the Climatic Research Unit of East Anglia University that show a politicization and manipulation of research used to promote cap-and-trade legislation. Seems like an important element in a policy debate. But then, the major media have also been less than diligent in tackling the scandal.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday downplayed the prospects for Senate action on cap-and-trade climate legislation this year. From The New York Times, “2010? Reid’s Comments Add Uncertainty to Climate Vote’s Timing “:

Reid had suggested that the global warming legislation could be tossed to the sidelines because of a packed legislative agenda that includes equally bruising battles over health care and Wall Street reform.

“So, you know, we are going to have a busy, busy time the rest of this year,” Reid said. “And, of course, nothing terminates at the end of this year. We still have next year to complete things if we have to.”

The odds of Congress acting on what amounts to a major new tax on energy seems unlikely during an election year. The Times also quotes Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), a member of the Democratic leadership, who is up for re-election in 2010 in North Dakota, an energy-producing state: “I think its increasingly difficult to have a climate change bill done before the end of the year.” (Reid is also up for election.)

• Wall Street Journal, Environmental Capital Blog, “Is Harry Reid bailing on climate legislation?“
• he Guardian (U.K.), “Climate change: Senate Democrats may delay legislation“

Maybe this will swing the debate: “Sweden Urges US Senate To Pass Climate Bill“:

STOCKHOLM — Sweden’s environment minister urged the U.S. Senate on Monday to pass legislation to control greenhouse gases, saying a delay in the vote is impeding negotiations on a new international climate treaty.

Minister Andreas Carlgren said America’s complex debate over health care reforms is sidelining its vote on a climate bill that is needed to persuade other nations — especially the fast-growing economies of India and China — to commit to lowering their greenhouse gas emissions at the Copenhagen climate summit in December.

“It is crucial that the Americans deliver a reliable emission pathway,” Carlgren said, referring to a plan for how emissions will be cut to stated targets. “But that is dependent on the Senate’s lawmaking.”

Only by acting to raise the costs of energy and destroy jobs can the United States demonstrate its seriousness in Copenhagen, or so goes the argument. Is it proportional? The more jobs we destroy, the more serious we are?

The Wall Street Journal opinion page recognizes the implications of the Tax Foundation’s latest report on corporate tax rates around the world. From “America the Uncompetitive“:

The new international tax rankings are out for 2008, and congratulations to Washington, D.C., are again in order. Our political class has managed to maintain America’s rank with the second highest corporate tax rate in the world at 39.3% (average combined federal and state).

Only Japan is slightly higher overall, though if you are silly enough to base a corporation in California, Iowa, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or other states with high corporate levies, your tax rate on business income is even higher than in Tokyo. For the first time, the U.S. statutory rate is now 50% higher than the average of our international competitors, continuing a long-term trend as the rest of the world keeps reducing corporate tax rates.

The Journal also debunks the populist corporate bashing that accompanied the latest GAO report on corporate tax payments.

Last week Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota waved around a new politically generated study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) finding that 28% of large U.S. corporations paid no income tax in 2005. “It’s time for big corporations to pay their fair share,” Mr. Dorgan roared.

Well, the Tax Foundation looked at those numbers and found that, among the large companies that paid no taxes, 85% of them also made no profits that year. American Airlines and General Motors escaped income tax for 2005 through the clever tax dodge of losing $862 million and $10.5 billion, respectively. How unpatriotic.

Read the whole thing, if you would.

Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) were on Fox News Sunday this weekend, a lengthy interview on energy policy. (Transcript.) At one point, Senator Dorgan said, “This issue of production is a canard.”

With respect, no it’s not. It’s not a canard, a wild goose, a red herring or a bowl of knoephla soup. The lack of domestic production is a fundamental failure of U.S. energy policy.

We point the readers to a very good column by Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters on the policies that have contributed to high energy costs:

Despite 35 years of empty rhetoric from politicians bemoaning U.S. dependence on foreign oil, legislatively enacted environmental barriers have actually resulted in a 25-percent decline in domestic production since the first ’70s energy crisis — while our usage has increased 20 percent.

And to the argument that, “It won’t help now, it will take years to develop, no, no, no…”

Predictably, the liberal counter-argument is that such production is years out, and won’t solve today’s supply problems. Such thinking ignores the speculative component to energy prices, and how much today’s bullish consensus about oil is based on the expectation that American production will continue to decline as it has for going on four decades.

With that in mind, anything Congress did today that indicated a change in philosophy concerning U.S. oil production would send shockwaves throughout commodities exchanges across the globe.

Read the whole thing.